Something was happening on Cat One. The Safety Officer was making sharp motions with his hands, and the orange glow of the Hornet’s afterburners was fading. The captain turned in his seat to watch one of the bigPLAT monitors suspended from the overhead for a better view. Someone down there bad scrubbed the launch.
“Four-oh-seven is down,” a voice called from the monitor speaker. “Pressure failure to Cat One.”
“Break him down and get him the hell out of there,” the Air Boss said. “Bridge, we have a downcheck on Cat One.”
Fitzgerald had already picked up the handset of the direct-access telephone known universally as the batphone and punched
in Pri-Fly’s number. “Pri-Fly, Bridge. We see it. What happened?”
“Damfino,” the Air Boss replied. “I’ll let you know as soon as I know myself.”
Fitzgerald replaced the handset and studied the organized confusion engulfing the Hornet on Cat One. Almost certainly, the problem was human error . . . and directly attributable to the strain the men had been under for months. Damn, but that had been close! If the steam failure had occurred as the Hornet was being shot off the deck, the F/A-18 would not have attained airspeed and would have gone off over the bow. Unless the aviator had been both very quick and very lucky and had managed to eject safely, Jefferson would have run him down in the water.
We’d have lost another aviator, Fitzgerald thought. With so many lost already.
The Captain sensed rather than heard a change in the atmosphere around him. Several of the ship’s officers had been engaged in low conversation on the starboard wing of the bridge, but they were silent now, and the enlisted men at wheel and engine-room telegraph were standing a little straighter, a little more studiously correct. Fitzgerald turned further and saw Captain Henry Bersticer stepping across the knee-knocker onto the bridge deck.
Bersticer was Admiral Vaughn’s chief of staff, a tall, swarthy man with a meticulously groomed black goatee that gave him a somewhat saturnine aspect. He walked over to where Fitzgerald was sitting. “Admiral’s compliments, Captain, and would you join him, please, in CV1C?”
He spelled out the letters, which stood for Carrier (CV) Intelligence Center, instead of pronouncing them “civic” in (he time-honored fashion. Bersticer was, Fitzgerald thought, new to carriers and didn’t yet have the hang of bird-farm language.
He wondered if his CO had things down any better.
“Very well,” Fitzgerald said. He slid off the stool. “On my way.”
Admiral Vaughn was waiting alone in CVIC, a pale, heavyset man in his late fifties, with hair that might once have been red but was mostly silver now. Fitzgerald looked around as he walked toward tbe admiral. The room, used as a TV
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Keith Dougtass
ARMAGEDDON MODE
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studio for the Chief of the Boat’s morning broadcasts over one of Jefferson’s on-board TV stations, had a cluttered feel, and many of the lights and electrical cables had not been struck. Fitzgerald winced inwardly when he saw it. Vaughn had an oft-stated love for order and the proverbial taut ship.
“Jim,” Vaughn said as Fitzgerald approached him. Berstieer shut the door, leaving them alone. The admiral reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a folded-up computer message flimsy. “This just came up from CIC. Have a look.”
Fitzgerald’s eyes held Vaughn’s as he took the flimsy and unfolded it.
It was a decoded flash priority from the skipper of the U.S.S. Kiddle, now steaming some one hundred fifty miles northwest of the carrier. Quickly, Fitzgerald read the details of the sub contact, now only minutes old. He looked up at the admiral and handed me message back. “Parrel says it sounds like a Foxtrot,” he said. “Soviet or Indian?”
“God knows,” Vaughn said. “No matter which, I don’t want that damned thing closer than a hundred miles from this carrier, understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied slowly. “If we can’t nail down that sub’s position, though, we’ll have to alter course pretty far west to maintain separation. It’ll mean quite a detour, and a delay in reaching Turban Station.”
“I know that. Frankly, I hope we can ID that sub as a Russkie. If it’s Hindi . . . God, we don’t know what the Indians are going to do.”